At least one person was killed in Bangladesh Friday after police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at thousands of Muslim protesters who torched homes of residents belonging to the minority Ahmadi sect, officials said.
The clashes occurred when 10,000 to 20,000 Sunni Muslim worshippers tried to attack Ahmadi Muslim homes and shops following weekly prayers in the northern town of Panchargarh, 350 kilometers (220 miles) north of Dhaka.
Tensions have been mounting after the Ahmadi Muslim sect — who many mainstream Muslims consider “infidels” — announced a three-day gathering just outside the town, set to start Friday.
Officers fired tear gas and rubber bullets to try to gain control, a police inspector told AFP.
A 25-year-old protester was killed after being struck by a rubber bullet in the forehead, Panchagarh councillor Mazedur Rahman Chowdhury told AFP.
“He died on the way to a hospital,” he said. Police confirmed the death.
Another 25 to 30 protesters and police were injured, according to the police inspector.
Ahmadi Muslim spokesman Ahmad Tabshir Choudhury said one member of his community was also killed in the clashes, but police did not confirm the death.
History of violence
Town councillor Chowdhury said the protesters torched and vandalised the homes of dozens of Ahmadi Muslims, and spokesman Choudhury said 60 Ahmadis were injured.
“We have postponed our meeting. Approximately 50-60 homes have been torched,” Choudhury said, adding the attacks continued until about 9:30 pm.
Government district administrator Jahurul Islam, however said only five Ahmadi homes had been vandalised. “The situation is under control,” he said.
He said nearly 10,000 mainstream Muslims had joined the protests, while another official said the crowd was at least 20,000 strong.
Hardline Islamist groups in Bangladesh, where Muslims account for around 90 percent of the country’s 170 million people, have campaigned for more than a decade for the government to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims.
The Ahmadis are an offshoot of the mainstream Sunni Muslim branch but are controversial because they believe their founder was a prophet.
According to police, border guards and the elite Rapid Action Battalion were deployed after Friday’s clashes to maintain security.
The community has faced several attacks in recent decades. In 1999, a bomb ripped through an Ahmadi mosque in the southern city of Khulna, killing at least eight worshippers.
And in 2015 a suicide blast by a suspected extremist at an Ahmadi mosque in the northwestern town of Bagmara wounded three people.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the authorities blamed homegrown militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which is accused of killing scores of religious minorities including Hindus, Christians, Sufi Muslims and Shiites.
